The NHL regular season was to start Oct. 11. All exhibition games were canceled last Thursday, and the preseason schedule lasted until Oct. 8. You don't need more than a calendar to deduce regular-season postponements are coming, likely this week. There's no consensus on how exactly the league would go about doing that, but in two-week blocks is one widely circulated theory.

In the meantime, Daly said the league has already lost about $100 million by canceling the preseason.

"That is not going to be recouped and that's going to cost both sides," Daly said. "That's unfortunate but it's a reality of where we are."

He also again blamed the stalemate on the NHLPA's unwillingness to compromise on the topic of the revenue split; players currently receive 57 percent of the league's $3.3 billion-and-growing pie, and owners want to dramatically reduce that number—apparently, before meaningful negotiations actually resume.

"What we have repeatedly tried to communicate is that we need to hear from them to move this process along," Daly wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "And we do think that's the only thing that is going to allow us to gain traction. But that doesn't mean we stop everything we're doing and simply wait around for a proposal."

The NHLPA, in turn, says there's no reason the next move can't come from the owners.

The league's last offer, which came Sept. 12, eventually gave the players 47 percent. The players' plan is a little more complicated and ties their share to projected growth, but they say it would leave them with 52 percent.

What makes the situation funnier—or more tragic, depending on your perspective—is that the first theoretical season remains the main battleground. That season, day by day, is disappearing. After that, both move closer to a 50/50 split.

"They have made some incremental moves," said NHLPA executive Donald Fehr, who expects to informally talk with commissioner Gary Bettman by Wednesday. "It's clear that the players have made substantial moves toward the owners and the owners have made substantial moves away from the players."

Naturally, NHLPA special Steve Fehr disputed Daly's notion that no progress had been made.